Best Witchwood Decks – Top Deck Lists for the Year of the Raven Meta

The new Witchwood expansion is here and we’re featuring the best decks for the Witchwood meta! We are covering decks for every class: Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock and Warrior!

While we’ve gained 135 cards from the new expansion, we lost three sets of cards which brings the largest change to the meta you will experience all year. The sets we’ve lost are some of the most iconic: Whispers of the Old Gods, One Night in Karzhan, and Mean Streets of Gadgetzan. We’ve lost many signature cards, such as N’Zoth the Corruptor, Jade Idol, and Kazakus! Full archetypes have been wiped out, and with that comes the entry of even and odd decks and the new keywords: echo and rush. If you have gotten tired of the same ol’ thing in Hearthstone, then this is the time to start playing again as this is as fresh of a meta as you are going to get!

Updates

4/21/2018: Major update, removed some lists, added a couple more!

The Best Witchwood Deck Lists

Here’s where we are listing all of the best performing deck lists in the early meta. Keep in mind that just because a deck is doing well early on does not mean it will continue to do so. There’s always at least one deck that over-performs early on and immediately falls to the back of the pack as decks become more refined. This just means you need to be careful when crafting if you are on a limited budget, and keep an eye on this page as we will be rotating decks in-and-out as we figure out what works the best!

Best Witchwood Druid Decks

Druid has an interesting hill to climb now that they’ve lost their ability to produce unlimited Jades in standard. Blizzard is pushing them towards a large hand variety which could be an interesting direction for the class, but it remains to be seen if this ends up being another forced archetype.

Taunt Druid started out pretty hot, but has since wilted to decks that take advantage of it. It’s still playable, but watch out for Quest Rogues!

Best Witchwood Hunter Decks

The loss of Barnes & Y’Shaarj, Rage Unbound to the rotation might mean the end for Spell Hunter. However, versions of that deck existed without the two powerful minions so we’ll see how it does. Baku the Mooneater could be a way for Hunter to go back to heavy aggression, being able to do 3 damage with your hero power just brings your opponent closer to defeat much earlier.

Spell Hunter is still a deck worth playing, but it’s on the fringe so be careful if you are considering crafting it.

Best Witchwood Mage Decks

Secret Mage lost a lot of cards to the rotation and was Mage’s most successful deck. The class will have to find new ways to survive with the loss of Ice Block. The Witchwood brings along potential of minion heavy cards with the addition of Archmage Arugal and Book of Specters.

A deck that was on the fringe quite a bit in the Kobolds meta is seeing some play after the rotation. If you like control decks, this is a fun one!

Best Witchwood Paladin Decks

Paladin has been one of the strongest classes around for a while now with multiple decks available to it. The class loses some strong cards in the coming rotation, cards like Vilefin Inquisitor and Rallying Blade were pretty important to the class. However, it still has Call to Arms which was likely the best card to come out of Kobolds and Catacombs.

Odd Paladin is one of the most popular lists in the game right now. Due to the nature of the rotation and the restriction of only having odd cards in the deck, we are starting to see some very interesting inclusions like Raid Leader and Stormwind Champion!

Against all odds, it looks like Murlocs aren’t leaving Paladin yet. Paladin’s Call to Arms is extremely strong, and with the murloc synergy makes this another deck to be reckoned with.

Best Witchwood Priest Decks

Priest was on top of the heap with its powerful lists like Highlander, Dragon, and Big Priest. But due to nerfs and now the rotation, these decks are either obsolete or have taken a big hit. The class does seem to get some help with the new legendaries Chameleos and Lady in White, but we’ll see how the class does without some powerful cards.

Priest hasn’t found a lot of success early in the expansion, but Spiteful Priest is doing pretty good work on the ladder currently.

Best Witchwood Rogue Decks

Rogue got hit really hard with the nerfs and lost the once powerful Tempo Rogue. It fell back on Miracle, as it usually does, but also has a semi-fringe option with Kingsbane Rogue. The Witchwood is bringing a lot of Burgle styled cards to the class again, but with the rotation removing some of the key cards of that potential deck, we remain skeptical on its chances.

Against all odds, it looks like Quest Rogue is back and is here to stay for the time being. Control decks beware, this deck is hard to beat. However, if you run an aggressive list, this deck should be easy pickings.

Miracle Rogue is still kicking around, so if you are a big fan of the archetype you can still run this to legend.

Best Witchwood Shaman Decks

The Shaman class has been on the bottom of the heap with Warrior in the Kobolds meta. The class appears to have gotten some strong Legendaries coming to it in The Witchwood: Hagatha the Witch & Shudderwock. Will these be enough to resurrect the class? Hard to tell, but Old Guardian looked at the possibilities in this post.

Was the early deck to hate, but has quickly come back down in popularity. It remains to be seen whether or not this deck finds a place in the meta, or is overall just a bust!

Best Witchwood Warlock Decks

Warlock has the best current deck list rolling into The Witchwood meta, and it doesn’t lose a whole lot of cards. In fact, it might have even gained a quality addition in Lord Godfrey for some heavy late game AOE. Zoo will likely find a way to exist, but Blizzard also seems to be pushing a self-infliction style of deck that could use the new Blood Witch and Deathweb Spider.

Best Witchwood Warrior Decks

Warrior has been a struggling class since the nerf to Fiery War Axe, but it was further knocked down by the big nerfs after Kobolds and Catacombs. The Witchwood brings a heavy focus on the new Rush keyword, and if that ends up being strong it could be a good sign for Warrior.

91 Comments

So, few weeks into the Witchwood. Lot’s of people have asked this already, yet I ask it too. What to craft, what to play? Well, if you really want to hit legend, you craft some amazingly fun pally or cube warlock stuff… *cough* and you’re done, mostly pally is the best performing class as far as I know. But well, if been running into them so much lately and it’s just so frustrating, no way I wanna be the one playing those decks. So looking for a deck that is actually viable and has a favourable (or at least even) matchup against those two decks. Also, I don’t have that much dust (3000), so preferably not a 30 legendary deck either. Maybe it’s a bit too much to ask, but you get the idea. Thx

Top ladder decks are pretty epic heavy so a lot of dust required depending on your card base. If you’re looking for fun on the ladder rather than shooting to the top there’s options though.

I’d start by looking at your card base and how close you are to some of these decks. Should also consider what types of decks you enjoy playing, as you will do better on the ladder with a play style you enjoy and understand rather than forcing yourself into a play style that’s foreign to you.

Thanks, by far my favourite type of deck is a midrange kind of deck. I have almost all cards for tempo mage, but I don’t quite enjoy playing it. Also, truth be said, I’m not a great hearthstone player, so hard to play decks aren’t a good choice either. Am thinking about spiteful priest. Minion based deck that seems to flourish in the mid-game.

spiteful priest is a good pick, its versatile and generally quite lenient on dust, only epics u rlly need are the 2 spitefuls, the rest are either rare, common or basic cards. Pretty good against cube too, with things like mind control and ffa

Hi, Watching a lot of streams most people have said that even paladin is a good dude paladin deck and tends to be stronger. Odd Hunter is also really good but probably wont get you to legends as fast dude to how poorly it preforms against meta aggro decks. I hope you the answer you were looking for.

I friggen LOVE when people such as yourself make such an ignorant and mindless comment as if you’re the deciding factor on if the deck is trash or not. The irony here is that deck performs amazingly yet you’re too narrow minded to even entertain that idea that it’s the players fault, not the decks… Me and 2 buddies have been using the exact same pally list and all 3 of us are past rank 5 now with the lowest win % being 68% and the highest being 71% which is absolutely INSANE success rates. There’s thousands of others that share the same success…. Here’s a little tip… You will NEVER become a better player if you continuously blame the deck other than yourself…. On every single loss you have I want you to sit back and run all the different scenarios you could of possibly done differently to sway the game in your favor. Find your mistakes and hone in on them…. If you don’t do this and continue to become frustrated blaming everything other than yourself then all you’ll be doing is putting yourself in a perpetual loop of failure.

Well i wouldn’t say that if you have toxmonger you have a 1 mana execute with elven archer and you still have a poisonous 1/1 to stick arround and potential to kill another big threat.
I would say if you think that you would enjoy quest Hunter alot just craft it if it’s fun for you then you will play it more often you will learn way faster how to use that deck and if you mastered it you still should be able to have a postive winrate which means you can climb with the deck, especially at high rank this deck can be really good. If mulligan correctly and you luck isn’t the worst at the particular moment you should have the upper hand on control lock cube lock control mage and any kind of slow deck if it isn’t shudderwock. With Dire Frenzy in the decklist of quest Hunter you play that deck basically like a value control deck which destroys the other control deck because your control tools also mean tempo play in case of Quest Hunter. High Legend i think its easy to get a positive Winrate even though i should warn you. With Quest Rogue getting more popular you basically autolose some games.

You shouldn’t craft Rin. I got her from a pack and still never used her. Even in the specific capacity that she was supposed to be used for (winning the fatigue game) she would almost always fail you. Its alot of mana to throw at a single mechanism that easily backfires because of the tempo game.

I got her from a pack as well – not worth the 1600 dust to craft but interesting enough to keep. Actually, I largely built a deck around her as my main win condition before Medivh rotated out and I was clocking around a 60% win rate – granted mostly at lower ranks and casual so it wasn’t spectacular but it was fun. The trick was to play her on 7 and immediately destroy her with Dark Pact – if she was silenced it was pretty much game over.

But losing Medivh, Dirty Rat and N’Zoth has kinda crippled that deck.

Erodhar

April 17, 2018 at 4:26 am

Lol… Since the rise of taunt druid I play control warlock and i can tell you that Rin won many games for me. It’s a great card!

I’m playing RinLock deck from r5, and have reached r2 consistently. My deck includes Mountain giants, Stonehill defender, with extra cards from new expac, namely Lord godfrey, Voodoo doll. Giants on t4 is always great, with voodoo doll, you have a 4 mana (combine with coil or dark pact) kills any minion. Super good when you have earlier Giant than your opp, then just kill theirs with 4 mana.
With lots of board clear, heal and taunt, the deck stalls easily against aggro deck (except odd hunter, warlock has slight disadvantage since they can just go face with hero power) and out value them later in the match. And Rin doesn’t do much in these match up (well at least she can taunt for 6 dmg).
Vs midrange deck, like spiteful decks, it’s Rin time to shine as the opp can’t keep up with strong removal and board clear. Once the board is stablized, you go for Rin’s Seal.
Against Control. There’re not many control decks out there. But control often don’t do much in early/mid game, if you have Rin’s seal early, it’s gg. And even you get her later in fatigue, both players run out of steam but with the seal, you will have more advantages over your opp.
The deck is pure control, and only win early if you manage to have early Giants and keep them alive by remove opp’s threats. If not the game goes extremely long. Even vs Odd Paladin, it takes 10-15+ mins.

Hey just your average Hearthstone player. Looking for advice for what deck to craft for this expansion because i want try out a new deck but have no idea what to make. Would be great if someone gave some input on shaman as I think shudderwock decks are good? Just really scared to craft anything incase it turns out to be bad :/

Don’t craft/dust anything yet as the meta hasn’t really been defined. I would recommend waiting at least a week or two before committing to something too hard. For shuderwock specifically, some of the variants are turning out to play slower than expected. Generally, a heavy control variants of shaman seem to be effective. There are some more aggressive decks like Tempo Rogue and Zoo that seem to be back on the rise as well (with aggro paladin staying really good). Also let’s not forget about cubelock. Anyway, there is too much variance right now and only time will be able to tell what decks stay on top. As I said, I personally recommend you wait for a while.

If you are still arround to read this, it seems you are on a budget if not, what classes did you use to play before the expansion, which one were fun for you? I played quest rogue for example before the new expansion hit and had like a 60% winrate on it after 200 games played with it and it wasn’t even listed in the most deck tier lists. Now it’s great and i still enjoy it even though the deck is a little bit diffrent now and i had to adjust my playstyle the deck still give me the same vibes as before. Also the Tempo Rogue deck if you enjoy to simply play a board game while doing smart trades and having a burst potential. Now its still a great deck and i didnt have to craft anything new.
So if you enjoyed the dude paladin i would recommend the even paladin decklist.
If you enjoyed token druid try the new Hand Druid it can be quite insane and has some really good matchups against some top tier decks
If you enjoyed cubelock, cubelock is still arround.
Basically draft what you think is fun to play so you’re dust don’t go wasted. If you craft a deck which is just good like the even paladin but you don’t like the way paladin works as a class like allways swarming the board and you don’t enjoy to do so, you simply don’t have fun to play the deck but you’re forced to play it since your out of dust even if it is considered the probably best deck at the moment.
Oh and if you enjoyed Control Warrior which i enjoyed a lot try out the quest warrior! i know it’s not considered as a tier 1 deck but its super fun for me, with a lot of board clear its good against many top tier decks with a lot of taunt you can stop a lot of aggressive decks and with the hero power if you don’t mind to lose sometimes to RNG you will have a lot of fun if it hits the exact right target it has to hit in order to win.
Also the midrange hunter is still a good deck which is very cheap , you can build it with only commons and rares and as you master the deck you will have a lot of wins. Disguised Toast even managed to climb to Legend with a budget midrange hunter deck within a single day

I would wait a week or maybe two before I crafted anything if I were a free to play or fairly budget player(this coming from an ex f2p). I know it’s hard to wait but that’s the only way to be sure of something being good. However the strongest candidates atm are cubelock and Aggro pally.

I think one week is not even nearly enough waiting. The whole meta is shifting. It will take at least a month til we know something relevant. And even then big changes may happen. Everyone was crafting rogue quest year ago then it got nerfed. Druid was also nerfed whole month after KotFT release. If you are on a budget, definitely wait. I know it’s hard though.

We all can surerly say that Paladin is the winner of the expansion for sure. So you can craft a Odd or Even Paladin deck. Cubelock with the new cards is still one of the best decks. If you dont have that much dust dont craft OTK Shaman, Toast got like 90% winrate with it to Legend but its patchday…people are learning and trying things out. So in your position you should not craft the Shaman OTK.

IMO shudderwock Shaman is just way to slow – could be user error, but Aggro decks destroy and it’s usually a 50/50 toss up against control. Seems to be on a big blip on a lot of pro’s radar (hence the possible user error) but I don’t think it’s very viable. On the other hand, it’s very satisfying when you actually able to do the combo wombo!

One cool deck idea is a Glinda Crowskin- Arcane Tyrant Combo.
I build a deck for it if you want to check it out, otherwise the combo just involves getting Glenda to survive a turn then summoning a full board of tyrants!
It seems fun to play around with, at the least

The main problem with this strategy is getting Glenda to survive a turn 🙂 There are lots of very powerful strategies involving that, but it will rarely happen – she’s a very high priority removal target!

Or play bloodbloom to cheat out a 5 or more mana spell and play it on a 8 mana turn did not test it but i think it does not matter that you spend hp for it , this kinda implies to have some hp by that time

What makes it a great counter to Cubelock? The deck’s best weapon againts Cubelock was Oracle, which it’s losing during rotation in addition to Corsair and Squidface. A lack of a Mill package and a sufficient suite of weapon buffs will likely render the deck to obscurity beyond what it already experienced.

If you have an Ooze to break their weapon, and use the Sap on their cubes or/and on their doomguards, they will not be able to put that much pressure as you can gain life comfortably with the weapon.
Furthermore, with all the tools to draw cards (Minstrel, Cursed Castaway, Cavern Poison) you are very likely to have your Ooze and every tool you need at the time you need it.
To replace the weapon buffs (the pirates), you have the new one Cutthroat Buccaneer) which you can easily combo with Shadowstep to get multiple buffs on Kingsbane.
Basically, with Vanish and Sap and maybe even a silence you can force him to PLAY his Doomguards forcing him to lose cards by himself.

Overall, I am not saying that this list is perfect in any way, I’m just saying that with the right deckbuilder, this deck could potentially counter the Cubelock.

Semi-pro player here, multiple top 100 legend finishes and looking forward to the new meta. I’m mainly a tempo/board centric player so I have my eyes on a number of decks that could be really powerful. People are underestimating the power of a standard tempo rogue build with keleseth again. I already have a core set of cards that are mid-range that can really push for board control and take over the game. I will have my deck list for that out soon.

Also, don’t ever discount zoo. Zoo is my bread and butter and I have over 6000 wins with warlock – all zoo. It is more of a mid-range line up, but it still will pack a punch as zoo is always flexible enough to include tech cards.

Also, the rush/tempo warrior. I saw some of the cards you guys have included and don’t think that list is optimal by any means, but it’s a good base.

Midrange hunter has a potential to shine here as well, and the aforementioned odd face-hunter seems viable, except some cards included aren’t that optimal from what I see.

i mean almost every twitch player has one subscriber. name one who doesn’t?

aaron

April 12, 2018 at 8:48 pm

ranked 15-5 consistently, lol. this is the most fun ive had in the meta in a while, generally just pick one of the four classes i play and work with it. having a lot of fun. good luck out there, playing control lock not much changed, added a rotten applebaum and godfrey. havent noticed a decrease in strength.

And in that way, I feel like it’s alright to call some high ranked player who is skilled at the game “pro” or “semi-pro”.

Especially since it gets pretty complicated when you start thinking about it. Most of the Hearthstone “pros” aren’t really “pros” by your definition, because they don’t make money from PLAYING Hearthstone (as in from their tournament winnings etc.) – most of them make money from streaming, and even lots of players participating in highest level tournaments have their normal day jobs.

On the other hand, I technically “derive a working salary from my playing of Hearthstone” – I write about the game for living, and to write about it I have to play it and be good at it. But I wouldn’t call myself a pro Hearthstone player.

I know it’s just a semantics argument and that wall of text was probably unnecessary, but I don’t have anything else to do right now anyway, lol.

There’s a number of players who make a living writing comment or are on a “team” playing hearthstone and they aren’t very good. They are either there for branding or have other intangible skill that they bring to the team in terms of content or whatever. So there’s quite an open definition on what a “pro” player is.

I’ve been around long enough since beta and always perform at a high level regardless if I’m not sponsored or not. I don’t have twitter, youtube accounts or anything of the sort, but I do know what I’m talking about do prep people or tutor them on how to become better players when they add me on hearthstone.

By no means am I a control player, I try to stay away from those decks as I don’t find them fun. But each deck has its merits. I’ll gladly help people out to become a better play if they want. I also never paid a cent for this game and have always been a F2P account.

Well, it is debatable, however, I chose to be F2P because I saw no reason to drop any $ on this game and wanted to see how far I can get with it. I realized I was in a position early to focus primarily on one or two decks. Slowly bur surely I built up my collection and now I am in a constant position to get every card I need each expansion and hover around 10k gold thanks to the quests. Mind you, it is a lot easier to be F2P now than it was back in the beta and first couple of expansions. If anyone wants any help for F2P, I’ll certainly offer my experiences.

But yes, it is a little harder and you have to work with what you got and learn how to master certain decks. I feel I have done that, zoo being one of them. So, I am top 100 on a pretty consistent basis. I’ll post all changes and decks as soon as the expansion releases.

Laughing

April 11, 2018 at 1:56 pm

Lmfao…he can call himself the king of England if he wants too. Wth are you to tell anyone here what to call themselves. People like you make me sick.

The beauty with zoo is that it is a great beginners deck to play to grasp the basic concepts of the game, especially with trading and controlling the board and also know when to go face. An easy deck to play, but hard to optimize and master. It’s also relatively a cheap deck to assemble if you are starting off, you have your core cards in the classic set like flame imps, voidwalkers, doomguards and soulfires. Then depending on the way you want to take it, you can then fill in the gaps with efficient neutral minions. I lean towards the keleseth version, so if you have the ability, kraft keleseth and then the other neutral minions will become stronger. If you don’t have ability to craft keleseth, fill with some good two drops like dire wolf alphas, knife jugglers and defender of argus. All basic cards that are inexpensive. However, if you do have the new sets coming out and have dust, vulgar homunculus is a good two drop as well. Tell me what your situation is and I can certainly help you craft a formidable zoo that will help you at the lower ranks and as you go up, maybe tech in a few cards here or there depending on what you have. Let me know.

Tweeg I have played hearthstone since before naxxramas. I was never competetive untill my lil bro reached legend before me. I want to be better at the game im curently rank 15 i was 10 previous season. I have a lot of dust to spare (yes i have paid for this game because i really like it) and I am open minded to tips and I really want to beat that scrub on my own. I hope you can add me; HiGiBu#2344
Hopefully ill see you online

hey tweeg i readed your post about zoo. I play only zoo warlock cuz i love it from the first sight 😀 i have over 500 wins on him, and can you advise me some nice cards from witchwood? i’m playing with keleseth. and do you think lich or guldan is worth it?